Whole Food Industry

Increase in online grocery shopping segment. As the market is heading to provide maximum consumer value by reducing time consumed for customer, online shopping or pick-up items trends got more attention from all players. Pressure from the new entrance like Amazon can change the game play.

Whole Foods started in 1980 when it’s CEO, John Mackey merged his store, SaferWay, with a competitor, Clarksville Natural Grocery. Since then, Whole Foods has expanded to 275 locations in North America and United Kingdom with 47,000 employees, making it the world’s leading supermarket retailer of natural and organic products (Harbin and Humphrey, 2013). With a mission to promote the vitality and well- being of individuals,

Whole Foods Market, Inc.'s CEO and cofounder, John Mackey, has been with the company since its start in 1980. He has driven the company to its success at being the nation's largest natural and organic foods retailer. Mackey is very motivated in keeping the company's sales high and growth rates increasing. The company utilizes a "decentralized team" approach to store operations. The majority of operational decisions are actually made at the individual store level. With this kind of store operation, it is important that each store have an efficient "team leader," capable of making higher-level decisions with only the help of an "associate team leader." Each aspect of the store is divided into a different segment; employees are then assigned in teams to each segment. Customer service is a prime aspect of operations as well. This

The rise of e-commerce and online retail has altered the general trends in this industry. Grocers such as Whole Foods Market, Kroger Co., Safeway Inc., and Fresh Market have adapted to this new technology of customers ordering groceries online and then picking it up without having to walk around the store to do so. The trend is also adopted by

Whole Foods Market, Inc. is the "world's leader in natural and organic foods, with more than 310 stores in North America and the United Kingdom" (Whole Foods Market.com. About. 2012. PP. 1). From its roots as a one store operation based in Austin, Texas the company under the direction of its founder and CEO John Mackey has "unquestionably transformed the way Americans produce, buy, and eat food" (Paumgarten, N. January 4, 2010. PP. 1).

Many people are continuously stating how brick-and-mortar businesses are not going to continue soon, because of the technological advances in the Internet. However, where do most people like buying their groceries? Online, or at the

Whole Foods Market first opened on September 20, 1980 in Austin, Texas, which is the company headquarters. The founders were John Mackey, Renee Lawson, Craig Weller, and Mark Skiles where they decided that the natural food industry was ready for a supermarket format (Whole Foods Market History, 2015). The current CEO’s are John Mackey and Walter Robb IV. Whole Foods Market stock ticker symbol is WFM and their NACIS code is 445110 (WFM Morningstar, 2015). The industry sector the company is listed under is a grocery store and retail trade. Whole Foods Market is the eight largest companies in the United States with 427 stores located in North America, Canada, and the United Kingdom with a total number of employees more than 90,000 people (Newsroom, 2015). Whole Foods Market has a business to business model where they merged with multiple companies like the Bread of Life, Fresh Fields, Food for Thought, Amrion, Allegro Coffee and other organizations with the concept of expanding their enterprise. Whole Foods Markets purchase inventory from suppliers where consumer can buy fresh organic food online or in stores. Some of the products Whole Foods Market specializes in are seafood, meats, cooked foods, and bakery goods (Whole Foods Market History, 2015).

1. As a customer, what do you want from an online grocery store? How does consumers’ behaviour differ when shopping for groceries on-line vs. off-line? What are the implications of these differences on the operations of an on-line vs. off-line store?

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Whole foods is a natural/organic food market who has developed a “game changing business model which is wrapped inside an even more iconoclastic management model” (Hamel, 2007). Whole Foods business and management models creates a competitive work environment that fosters care, trust and innovation. Because of the unique organization and management Whole Foods Market, Inc. is the largest natural-foods grocer in the United States with more than 360 stores in the U. S., Canada and the United Kingdom. Whole Foods 2013 annual sales were $12.9 billion, with an operating profit of $893 million and cash flow of 472 million.

Whole foods are an organic and natural food grocery. John Mackey is the founder of whole foods which has been a “certified organic” grocery store. John Mackey founded the company in the name of Safer Way Natural Foods in Austin, Texas. The company Safer way merged with Clarksville Natural Grocery in 1980 and renamed as Whole foods. Whole foods mission statement mainly aims at the following points: Quality food and Quality state of mind, Standards of excellence for food retailers, High standards in all aspects of the business. They operate by the motto “Whole foods, Whole people, Whole planet.” In 2016, Whole foods market operates around 466 stores, including its subsidiaries in the United States, the Canada, and the United Kingdom. The company generated global net sales to the value of 15.7 billion USD in

Purpose –The general aim of this study is to portray a complete and detailed picture of the overall purchase decision making process of consumers shopping online for groceries, including pre- and post-decisional stages.

For online grocery stores initial investments are high as it requires newly developed infrastructure or upgraded operations, software’s, tools to support online market, Mobile/Tablet based applications which provide modern standard of implemented technology for buying items online, an option of real-time tracking feature and most important security features as customer can have option either to pay by card or directly cash on collection, if its card whether customer willing to pay by PayPal service or by manually entering all the details, Marketing also plays an important role in any kind of business, among other things higher operating costs matters for these kind of businesses. The investments also involves higher risks because of market uncertainties, logistics requirements, costs differ significantly across different product categories for example canned food versus fresh food. Pure online grocers find it difficult to enter in an online market on a broad scale because of high investment and start-up costs, they are most likely to operate as niche players in large metropolitan areas working with logistics and shopping partners such as Amazon to provide home delivery service in Europe, Traditional stores such as Asda in U.K take advantage of their retail outlets and pick consumer items for delivery from their existing stores.

This case study deals with measuring the immeasurable in the food and beverage industry such as smell and taste. The problem was resolved using a Six Sigma DMAIC problem solving methodology. The basic equation of Six Sigma, Y = f(x), defines the relationship between a dependent variable ‘Y’ or the outcome of a process and a set of independent variables ‘x’ or possible causes which affect the outcome.

Today, consumers have countless options on where to get their groceries. They can go to a traditional retailer like Kroger and Albertson’s, who are currently in the lead with $103B and $58B in revenue, go to a more specialized store like their local bakery, shop at Trader Joe’s, or increasingly turn to the internet for their grocery shopping (source). The amount of options can be overwhelming, with 38,441 supermarkets in the United States alone, supermarkets being grocery stores with sales of $2MM+ annually (source). In addition to the supermarkets, there are 212,000 traditional food stores selling $571B in retail food and nonfood products in 2011 alone (source). Architectural innovations that have allowed e-commerce to take off are also disrupting the food commerce industry as more people, specifically millennials opt to do their grocery shopping online. Today, 23% of Americans are buying good online, a number expected to reach 60% in ten years. (SOURCE IS REPORT IN GOOGLE FOLDER). U.S. online grocery sales represented $7B in sales in 2015, a number predicted to hit $100B by 2025, an upward trend that is only predicted to increase as shown in Figure B (Source).